A mother’s love for her ailing daughter prompted Lynn Griffith to start her own bakery selling gluten-free and milk-free products.

Katie’s Bakery was born because of Griffith’s daughter Katherine, who has issues with products made with wheat and gluten.

“She (Katie) around the age of 10 had a problem with wheat and gluten,” Griffith explains.

Griffith, who is a chef in her own right, wasn’t impressed with the few gluten-free products in the market, so she decided to do something about it.

She used her experience as pastry chef and a baker to make mixes and baked goods for those who couldn’t enjoy gluten or milk.

Griffith describes gluten as similar to “a glue that holds things together.”

Like in breads, cakes and cookies. The challenge for Griffith and other gluten-free chefs is to make products that still taste good without the gluten.

She says “You have to figure out the right ingredients to hold it together.”

“It boils down to chemistry at the end of the day.”

Griffith has managed to not only achieve this, but to make gluten-free and milk-free products be so delicious they may surprise some.

Griffith explained she experimented once with some customers who just wandered into her store. She got them to try a few samples of her cakes and cookies and to their surprise, the customers had no idea it was gluten-free.

“We get one of two responses: ‘Oh wow, this is fantastic, I would have never known the difference!’ or ‘Gluten-free? Eww’,” she says with a laugh.

Griffith says the problem some people have is that they are preoccupied with the idea that they would not like it (the product), but as she says “at the end of the day, all you have to do is make it taste good.”

Like her orange cake, which she says is her most popular product.

Soon, word got around about how good her baked goods were, which lead to people spreading the word about Katie’s Bakery.

“One person tells another person, tells another,” Griffith said.

But maybe the most important thing Griffith is doing is providing a service to those like her daughter, who can’t enjoy gluten products or milk.

“There is a sense of gratefulness that they can find something.”

Griffith says there are people who come into store, try her food and then break down and cry because they or someone they know, can finally can enjoy sweets again.

Griffith says when she see those examples of how people are moved to tears, you can’t help but be moved.

Griffith wants to continue making affordable products for all in the Pasadena area and maybe beyond to enjoy and is glad that the food industry no longer sees gluten-free products as a fad, but as a solution.

“This is a very real problem and thankfully we can be the solution for some people, you don’t have to take the joy out of eating because you can’t eat gluten.”